* 1970's, Oregon, possible swan sacrifice reported in
Ashland, Fortean magazine, FT187, 2004.
"Regarding the Mythchaser question about swan-killing
[FT181:28]: I grew up in Ashland, Oregon, a town built
around a Shakespeare Festival - a sort of yankee
faux-Stratford-upon-the-Avon. At the foot of the theatre
complex stretched Lithia Park which included two duck
ponds, each home to a pair of swans. Usually these were
mutes, but I remember very clearly, as child in the late
1970s, the city council imported two black swans. Both
disappeared almost immediately amid rumours of violent
death. My mother said vagrants had killed them for food, but
I wondered then why the white swans had never shared that
fate.
There was a persistent whispering that Satanists were to
blame, as only the black swans were suitable for their
nefarious rites."
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